


Complications

by LayALioness



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 22:47:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 11,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4117519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was getting easier to imagine what it might be like to stay. Not just at the funeral home, but with her. Together. This was his pet dog fantasy, except he’d never much wanted a pet. Never seemed worth the effort. Looking at her there, across the table, he could see now that he was wrong.<br/>He’d been wrong about a lot of things.</p><p>She’s smiling again. She’d always smiled before; at the farm, at the prison. At everyone, and at life in general. He, like the rest of them, had chalked it all up to her youth. Naivety. He was embarrassed for that now.</p><p>But it’s been weeks since then and they’re so far past that by now. And they’re warm and their stomachs are filled with peanut butter and jelly and the house still echoes with the sound of her music and she’s smiling at him and everything is so goddamned complicated and he isn’t sure of anything anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Burn.

_I know that you look at me, and all you see’s another dead girl!_

Her words shocked him, but he supposed they were fair. He’d never given her reason to think any different. She was wrong, but he didn’t say so. Didn’t say anything—just watched as she stormed through the trees. Waited a moment before heading after her.

He tried to remember first meeting the girl, but couldn’t. He’d been so angry, back then. So quick to lose focus and toss words out like grenades—so quick to burn like a matchstick and burn everyone’s hands. These days, he felt a little like a smolder, all smoke. Mostly, he just felt damned tired.

Those memories of the farm were all blurred images of Carl as the bullet ripped in and out of his chest. Carol, a crumped mass of flesh and bones in his arms; the shocking pain of getting stuck like a pig by his own arrow; Merle’s words that brought him out of it, even if they weren’t real. Even if they weren’t worth imagining.

Andrea mistaking him for a walker, though he could hardly blame her. hardly blamed anyone much anymore. No one seemed to realize that though Daryl was bitter and spite tucked in red leather skin, he kept most of it aimed at himself. Andrea apologizing, gifting him that book. Wasn’t much of an apology. Wasn’t much of a good read either, what little he’d flipped through. Kept it anyway.

Sophia’s face, but different, as she stumbled towards them with outstretched arms. He’d caught Carol as she’d fallen, and he never mentioned it but even without her to hold, he’d have ended up on the ground.

Knuckles raw and aching after hitting Randall until he went numb. The bastard deserved it, but that hadn’t kept him from hiding his bloody hands from the rest of the group.  
The farm in flames, the sound of wood crackling away under fire, and the mass of lurching corpses all around. The feel of Carol’s thin arms around him—she was the only one he’d managed to find in the rush, and he’d felt a selfish relief as she shivered onto his bike, that at least _they_ would make it. The same sort of relief that he felt further along on the roadside, at the sight of rusted cars and bleary faces he recognized. Quickly burned away like the farmhouse, by thoughts of Andrea caught alone in the swarm. He only half meant his offer to go back; he knew he couldn’t turn heel on the quivering bodies around him. He’d lost the damn book, too.

He realized that he must have spoken to Beth, at least grumbled, while bedridden after the arrow incident. She’d been the one helping her father stitch up his hide. She’d brought him a breakfast of sorts, with real honest-to-goodness lemonade. It was more sour than the sickly sweet powder he was used to. She’d smiled but he’d hardly cared to notice, too wrapped up in thoughts of his brother and the little girl, the people he hadn’t managed to save.

The barn came sometime after that. Sophia. Dale, with his insides spilled out and Daryl felt almost embarrassed for him. But mostly he just felt sorry as he pulled the trigger back.  
And then Beth slit herself open on a mirror, which he’d heard about, walking by one of the rooms in the house. He didn’t remember who’d been whispering—the whole house was filled with gossips, one of the main reasons he slept out in the yard. He hadn’t given much thought to the girl’s brief fling with suicide. Death was hardly anything new, and it’d always come in a dozen varieties. He gave a quick pause, mouth puckering at the thought of lemonade and a little boned girl, and couldn’t say he felt much surprised by it. She looked sweet as anything, just like Sophia. Sweet didn’t last long in this type of world.

No, Daryl didn’t see much of anything about Beth Greene, until her home had burnt down to the quick, leaving them homeless and huddled by the side of the road. The fire burned just enough to light up half her face, but her hair caught the most of it, and for one foolish second he thought it must smell like honey with the way it dripped down from her head.

And then she started singing and Maggie joined in, but Daryl couldn’t give her much thought because every ounce of his attention was being funneled into the younger girl, until he felt like Dale—stripped open and gutted, with nothing left inside.

He didn’t tell her any of that, just watched as she burned her way through the forest, thoughts drifting back to the way that fire had looked on her hair.


	2. Chapter 2

Home.

She’d been looking at him, just to try and figure out why he kept her around. He didn’t try to catch her eye, or offer some sort of dishwater comfort like _because you’re strong_ , or _because you’re family_.  
That was all true, but there was something else behind his elbows, prodding his limbs along. He kept by her because that’s what you did. When dead people start crawling from their graves to eat at the living, it’s never enough to just save yourself. He hadn’t grabbed Beth, tugged her along, for anything less than selfish reasons. He’d wanted something to look after. Something to prove that he wasn’t like Merle or their father. That he didn’t run from the only things left that still mattered.

But even more than his stupid fucking need to play hero, was the lonely homesickness that nested deep in his bones the moment those prison walls crashed around him. And he’d suddenly understood why Rick had cried over the loss of those goddamned piglets.  
At the time he’d thought it stupid, crying over a bunch of dumb animals that didn’t know food from their own shit, but now he knew he’d been wrong. Because it wasn’t about the loss of the animals, or even fresh meat. Rick was mourning the comfort they’d felt, glancing out over that yard filled with corn and sweet sugar snaps. Pigs they’d been foolish enough to name, foolish enough to think they might last long.

And looking at Beth, her shouts skating over his skin like water, he knew he’d never leave her behind, never let her go it alone. Because she was the last bit of home he had left, and that was worth more than anything stuffed in their rucksacks. Worth more than shelter, and bullets, and food. strange to think how much he’d focused on surviving for so long, not realizing he’d missed the whole goddamned point of it.

_Do you even feel anything?_

She’d meant it to hurt him, and it did, but not much. He was still too raw from the prison. From Hershel. He couldn’t bring himself to answer, but he screamed the words in his head.  
_Yes_ , he thought _, yes._ He felt things—he felt too goddamned much, that was the problem, that had always been the problem. He felt a whole mess of things, all tied and knotted up around and between his organs, until he thought the skin there might burst. The skin he’d spent years piling bundling up in layers like a kid in the winter, stitching it all back together time and again. And none of it ever fucking mattered, because he always seemed to find himself ripped open by something else.  
By Merle, even though he thought he’d cremated that hatchet a long time ago, because even before the apocalypse, burying had never been enough for him. Dixons liked to burn.  
Then Sophia, and he still wasn’t sure why that little girl’s ghost still lingered just over his shoulder. Not like he’d ever had much to say to her when she was living. Even less now that she’s dead.  
Lori, because _fuck_ if she hadn’t grated his nerves some, but she’d still been part of his tribe, for however briefly, and his stomach still turned at the thought of her baby never knowing her face.  
Andrea and Dale and T Dog and the whole goddamned farm, and every other soul he’d lost along the way, and each time he almost asked himself why he kept on going through it, why he didn’t just turn heel and follow Merle’s lead. And each time he stowed that thought away, in the places he liked to stow things like that so they wouldn’t eat at him, like termites burrowed under the timber of his bones.

And now the prison—and he may not have liked it much, being the center of so much faith and responsibility—but they’d been his people and that had been his home and he’d had a seat on the _council_ , for fuck’s sake, and now here he was, Daryl Dixon stranded out on the edges once again. He wondered if he’d always end up her, no matter how many strangers he found to protect. How many times they made a new home from the ashes. Didn’t take much for a building to burn; just one mistake. Just one cigarette.

And then he stowed that thought away too and kept after her, following the bob of yellow hair through the trees. She might not have been made of brick or concrete, but she was the closest thing he had left.


	3. Chapter 3

Hard.

Daryl never chose the easy route. There was a poem about that, he knew, though he couldn’t remember the words. Something about two paths, one simple and one not, and taking the hard one.   
_Sounds about right_ , he’d thought to himself. Years and years of trying to take that easy road, and being forced down the hard one. Eventually he just stopped trying. Like most everything in life, simple only ever seemed to happen on its own.

He didn’t take the easy road with Randall. He knew they weren’t gonna break him, just like he knew that it needed to be done. So he took that responsibility, because he knew it was one he could handle. Something he could offer to the more well-mannered wolves of their group. Just another reason he kept to the fringes; he didn’t want his teeth getting dull.

He didn’t take the easy road with Dale. He could see in Rick’s eyes that he couldn’t pull the trigger, couldn’t stumble down the dark path Daryl had lived in all his life. And so he took the gun from his battered friend’s hand, gentler than when he’d picked that little girl’s rose. And he said the words, though he knew Dale couldn’t hear them. Said he was sorry. Called him one of his own before putting him down. Wasn’t sure if the man would’ve taken that to mean much, but it meant something to him.  
And he thought he’d understood Rick that night. Thought the man was simply too used to the morals from back before the turn, before the blacks and whites that made up the world went all gray in the middle. And then Sophia stumbled out of that barn and his gun fell down, just before Carol. And he just held her and watched as Rick, sorry as anything, walked straight up and took the shot.   
And he knew then, that Rick had been made for this world, same as him. They’d just taken different paths to get there.

He didn’t take the easy road with his brother, much as the others might have thought he did. Truth was, it was harder being with merle after having that taste of family. Real family, even if they didn’t all share a name. It was an ache he thought he’d swallowed down as a kid, brought bubbling back up like bile and a punch to the gut.   
Going back to the prison, to Rick and Carol and Glenn, that was one of the easiest decisions he ever made. Simple came when he waited.

Simple was the feel of Judith in his arms, fleshy and pink and squirming and _alive_. Simple was the way she fit in the crook of his elbow, the tip of the bottle up to her lips. The name falling from his mouth with a smile, the first he’d managed to scrounge up in years.

Simple was Hershel’s hand on his shoulder, a steady weight and Daryl leaned in just a little, because it was different than with Rick and Carol. Something less like friendship and everything like pride. And Daryl didn’t have much to compare it to, but he figured it might be fatherly. Hershel was old, true, but old didn’t always mean something. Dale had been old, and Daryl had thought him a fool most of the time. Daryl had thought the same about Hershel, keeping a barn filled with monsters that would just as soon peel the skin from his bones.  
But looking around himself at the prison, a plate of food on his knee and Hershel’s hand on his shoulder and Judith just a few feet away gurgling in Beth’s arms, he realized he’d been wrong about him. He understood that need to cling onto the thought that someday, things might get better.  
Daryl realized he hadn’t understood that before, hadn’t felt that need for a silver lining, because before, he hadn’t had much to hold onto. He hadn’t had so much to lose.

Simple was being with Beth, Judith’s mother and Hershel’s daughter, the rope tied between them, with Daryl somehow snagged in the middle as they stumbled along. And everything else around them was difficult, but turns out she was the easiest path he ever chose.


	4. Chapter 4

Close.

They became close as they wandered through abandoned homes and forests. It was to be expected, what had happened with the others—Rick and Glenn and Carol. Blood became water at the end of the world. You hardly ever got to pick the stragglers that ended up on your side. Constant proximity makes them friends. Constant trust makes them family. Makes them close.  
And she trusted him. She knew him as Daryl-the-Hunter, the one that always provided for their family. And occasionally he was Daryl-the-Soldier. He can still remember the feel of the grenade in his hand, like a tennis ball. The sound it made rolling into the tank. The heat of it on his back, as he scattered. He sometimes wonders why he never joined the army like Merle, but inside he knows. Before the apocalypse, he was just another jackass with a gun. One more thing the end of the world had given him. A dozen it had taken away.

Beth trusted him with their survival, but not much else. He couldn’t fault her for that. Since that night around the campfire, he’d barely given the girl a second thought. Too many things to worry about. Food and shelter through winter. Lori’s stomach, stretching wider each day. The moans of predators, gnashing teeth in the dark. And Daryl knew that even at the prison—even with a seat at the council where he felt nothing more than uncomfortable, knuckles aching for action, folded in his lap—he was still the straggling thread on a carpet. A cat that doesn’t know which side of the door it wants. He wasn’t Rick or Glenn or Maggie. He wasn’t someone she could fall asleep with, reassuring her everything would be okay.   
Instead they folded up knees and elbows to fit together in the trunks of old cars, or a small orange tent. They breathed each other’s stale breath and they huddled under the same blanket and they (tried not to) see each other dress.   
They became close.

But the first time he felt close to her—actually, honest-to-goodness _close to her_ —was that afternoon by the still, warped in his mind by the alcohol and the harsh taste of his mouth and the even harsher words he shot at her like arrows, aiming to kill. And he knows that she was angry and she was shouting, but he can’t remember what they said.   
He mostly remembers the feel of her arms around him, different from that time at the prison. Less soft comfort and more an iron brace, looking to straighten out his spine, gone crooked over the years. She held him like that for what felt like hours. Could’ve been minutes. Could’ve been years. He thought she would cry, but she didn’t, and even though he couldn’t see her, he knew that was the strongest she had ever looked. And he had never felt as safe—not in his hometown, not with his brother, not at the farm, not even at the prison—as he felt in those arms.

That night they sit together, knees only inches apart and he’s almost sober and she’s still drunk and the fire lights up that side of her face again and he almost asks her to sing, but then doesn’t.  
She says _you’re gonna be the last man standing_ , and maybe she means it as a compliment, but it’s the worst thing she could’ve said. Because he’s spent the last four years keeping the rest of them safe because he didn’t want to go through the end alone, even though he knew he’d survive it.  
And now he’s not sure he can do even that. He thinks that, even more than the walkers, the being alone might eat him away.

 _You’re gonna miss me so bad when I’m gone, Daryl Dixon_.

They grow closer.  



	5. Chapter 5

Scars.

 _Do you miss your family?_  
It’s a ghost of a whisper really, and he almost thinks she hadn’t meant for him to hear.  
They’re in the trees and everything is lit up in silver from the wave of constellations in the winter sky.  
Her face is just six inches from his, sharing the blankets, but careful not to touch. It’s just as well; the feel of other people’s skin on his feels like a rash.

 _Didn’t really have one_ , he replies, voice rougher than he meant it to be. He hasn’t spoken in a while. The air is cold on his tongue, making his teeth ache. He tries not to glance over, to see what the starlight does to her hair.

 _I miss everyone,_ Beth whispers, like it was some secret that he doesn’t already know.   
He doesn’t answer, just reaches an arm up to scratch at the scars on his shoulder blade. The cold always makes them sore.

 _It’s stupid, she continues, I miss people I didn’t even care about. Didn’t even know. People from school and town and church…_ she trails off, but he doesn’t ask her to continue. Isn’t sure if he wants her to. After a pause, it seems like she’s waiting for him to offer some sort of reply. He isn’t good with those. His scars start aching again.

 _Miss Merle sometimes_ , Daryl grinds out, throat dry like gravel. _Sonofa bitch that he was._ He takes in a breath of air so cold it feels like ice going down his esophogas. He hasn’t thought about his brother for days now, and thought that should make him feel guilty, it doesn’t. He’s been busy wondering after more recent losses. The ones that still burned. And if he were to be honest, missing Merle has nothing to do with brotherly love.   
He misses Merle because it’s nice sometimes, knowing someone out there knows your pain. Carries the same scars on their skin. Lives with the same demons.  
But Daryl hasn’t thought about those in a while, either. Lately all his demons had come looking for him, shambling about and gnawing at nothing.

 _Don’t hardly think of life before_ , he admits. _Mostly the people lost since._

He knows her thoughts are probably drifting towards Maggie and their father. Daryl hardly ever thinks about the scars across his back. He carries them along, just like his mother’s name on his chest, though he hardly thinks of her either. Usually he just forgets about them, until it gets cold, or someone noticed in the shower. Usually he has enough to worry about besides a childhood spent on the wrong end of a belt.

His thoughts cycle between his own family at the prison, tied together by everything but blood. There’s more than enough of that to go around, already. He thinks about Rick and Carl and Lori.   
He doesn’t think about Judith, because there are some black holes even Daryl Dixon won’t sink into.   
He does think about Glenn, and Carol, and Michonne, and Maggie. Hershel, killed by a dead man. Merle, and that moment of hesitation as his paled eyes locked on Daryl’s, and he thought there might have been a shine of recognition. Wondered if maybe somehow walkers find their own families, just the same as them.  
But then there was the snarl, and Daryl had to shove him off twice before he could finally stick the knife in his brother. Merle would have called him a pussy.

 _I’m glad you’re here_ , Beth offers. It’s a small sort of gesture, but he takes it all the same.   
He knows she doesn’t mean him, specifically. She’s glad she isn’t alone, thinking about dead people under the stars.

 _Yeah_ , Daryl agrees. He’s glad he isn’t alone, either.

She doesn’t speak up again.  



	6. Chapter 6

Sprain.

_Pretty soon, I won’t even need you anymore._

She’d said it as a joke, but he still wished she hadn’t. Said a lot of things he didn’t want to hear. Did a lot of things he didn’t want her to. Her brash hunt for alcohol was at the bottom of that list. Her eyes on him in the dark, soft as anything and something else too, _that_ was at the top.

And now this, because he couldn’t help but think about it, because he’d always had a good imagination. Lot of good it ever did.   
He couldn’t help but picture Beth Greene taking what he showed her and carrying it away. Leaving him behind to wallow in his own spit and vinegar in the mountains. She’d take her pack and her voice and those eyes of her and she’d find somewhere nice enough for her to fit in. Maybe find some people, all of them better than him. Maybe not at tracking or killing, but that’s not what it’s about anymore, he knows that now. It’s not enough just to survive.

And then quick as anything, she’s falling down and he’s rushing to save her, the only thing he’s good at, the only thing he knows how to do. He has an arm wrapped around her spine and a hand around her ankle, watching her move it as if he knows what he’s doing. He’s no doctor, no vet. He’s no Bob or Doc S. or Hershel. His hands were never meant to heal.

But she’s looking at him again, and he has to hold her to walk, and he tries not to feel relieved because that’s so goddamned stupid—a sprained ankle in the apocalypse is practically a death sentence.   
But all he can think about is the feel of her ribs under his fingertips and knowing that, if only for a while, she still needs him after all.  



	7. Chapter 7

Sleep.

The night that she sang was the first night he’d dreamt in years. It had been equal parts hard and easy, drifting off to the sounds of her voice and barest touch of fingertips to the piano. Her music was as soft as the rest of her. He didn’t recognize the song, not that it mattered; he wasn’t focusing on the words. The coffin _was_ comfortable, he’d meant that. He knew he probably should have felt a little uneasy, sleeping in a bed meant for corpses, but his standards of living had been the first thing he’d killed, and it’s not like the dead did much sleeping these days, anyhow.

The dream had been a simple one. He and Beth were back at the prison. Some of the others were there. Some weren’t. Everyone went about their day like usual. Everything was quiet and peaceful. No walkers clawed at the fences. No militia arrived at the gates. No one was hungry or terrified. Hershel laid a hand on his shoulder as he passed by, with a solid head and two legs made of flesh and bone. Beth told him a joke that didn’t make sense, but in the dream he started laughing.

He woke, rested and unnerved. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed.  
He glanced up, almost embarrassed to look at her, in case she somehow realize she’d visited him in his sleep.   
The room was empty and he leapt up, fighting the urge to call out her name. he took the stairs two at a time and found her in a bedroom, collapsed on the mattress diagonally in her messy hair and clothing, like a kid too tired to make it under the sheets.  
He shook her awake and glanced away when she sat up and her sweater fell off one shoulder. He’d seen the girl half naked before, but that shard of pale skin was making his neck itch.

 _How’d you sleep?_  
He shrugged in answer, which wasn’t really an answer, but she didn’t ask again.  



	8. Chapter 8

Gone.

She always managed to find the words that gnawed him through, right down to the marrow, rose than any walker bit or bullet.

_You’re gonna miss me so bad when I’m gone, Daryl Dixon._

He wanted to think that day wouldn’t come, but he wasn’t so foolish. He was a few years from thinking like a kid, like somehow everything could turn out alright in a situation as fucked as theirs.  
Hell—even the kids these days didn’t think like kids. That pissed him off most.

Beth had been a kid when they’d met. He still didn’t remember it, but knew it all the same. Just a few years older than Carl. Didn’t take much to glance over and see how much she’d changed.  
She’d left that little girl side of her in a bloodied up mess in the bathroom.

Sometimes she caught him staring, and that might have been the worst of it if it weren’t for what happened next. The look she’d give him. Warmer than he was used to, and in the cold of the trees they needed all the warmth they could get.   
He tried to ignore the way her eyes made him want to crawl out of his leather tanned skin and into something better.   
He always looked away first.

They never talked about it, and he wouldn’t have minded that so much if it didn’t always feel like she had something more to say.

He wasn’t sure when he’d begun to think of her as a light. Not his or anyone else’s—she’d proven that much—but a light just the same. It seemed to shine out through her skin, from her insides, up through her eyes and hair. He caught himself watching for it each chance he got, and some he didn’t. Caught himself wondering what it might be like to touch her at her brightest. Grab her little bracelet of a wrist bone and hold tight. Wondered if she might leave a burn across his palm.

And when he wasn’t thinking about her hair or eyes or wrist, he was thinking about her words and how they cut up his insides.

 _You’re gonna miss me_.

He ran the line over and over in his mind each night, like some agonizing prayer to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in. Wasn’t sure of much of anything, anymore.   
But he thought over the words anyway, ears straining to find the sounds of her breathing in the dark. And he hoped like Hell she wouldn’t prove herself right, this time.


	9. Chapter 9

Ask.

They slept more in the trees than not. He was a dog gone feral, untrusting of houses, and she was willing to sacrifice comfort for what he thought might keep them alive. It was on one of those nights in the forest, chillier than usual—winter would be on them soon, and he knew they’d have to seek refuge behind windows and walls.  
It was after the still. Before the funeral home. They lay half in the tent and half out, with their heads poking into the brisk winter air, the inside having gotten too humid with the stink of human heat.   
She thought he was asleep, and so he forced himself not to flinch when he felt her wind her thin frozen fingers through his. He had to bite back a few words at the pain of sudden cold, but more than anything he had to remind himself to breathe evenly.

Three times now she had touched him without warning, and never out of fear or anger or grief. He wasn’t sure why she did it. Why she kept doing it. Comfort, but for him or for her? The feel of her skin made him uneasy. He wasn’t sure what to do with it. He wasn’t sure if he wanted her to stop. He wasn’t sure what he wanted.

 _This is nice_ , he told himself, because it was. But it was also strange, and he was so damned tired, and he didn’t need this girl’s frozen fingers keeping him up all night.

 _Daryl_ , she whispered. It was a question. He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to know what she was asking, or why she had her hand folded in his. She gave a little sigh, not quite disappointment, but something along those lines.

When he woke before sunrise, her arms were wound around his like some sort of ivy, clutching at the grooves of his skin. He peeled her limbs more gently than he could have. They didn’t talk about it.  
Sometimes he wonders what she was going to ask.  



	10. Chapter 10

Clean.

He’d watched her change into the yellow top at the resort. It looked expensive. Nice. She’d glanced at it in the mirror and grinned, and he’d watched it all from the shadows because that’s what he did. He lurked and he watched and he killed walkers.   
And ten minutes later her smile was gone and her new shirt was covered in gore.  
He did that too. Ruined things.  
There wasn’t time for her to change again.

He found himself thinking back on that day, weeks later in the funeral home. Beth was milling about, poking into the history of the place, nosing like she always did. She wanted to know the whys and hows of things. Daryl didn’t much care either way, as long as everything did what it was meant to. These days, curiosity was just another way to get yourself killed.

He watched as she favored her good leg. He could still remember the feel of her, and he clenched and unclenched his fists at the thought. She was dimly lit by the fire, just enough for him to really see the toll their little field trip had taken. Her skin was covered in layer on layer of sweat and blood and Georgia dirt and all the other things mothers told their kids to shy away from.  
He knew he probably looked worse, but he’d never had good hygiene to begin with, and Beth was used to regular showers at the prison, even if the water always ran cold.  
She hadn’t complained any, but he thought back to her face in that lodge. Her grin in the mirror, dimples deep enough to bury him in.

For a moment, he wondered what it would be like to take some of their water, and a rag from upstairs. To peel the grimy clothes from her body like a snake shedding its skin. To run the cloth over each inch of stained skin, washing her clean and pale again.

And then the moment was over and she was glancing at him over her shoulder. No dimple, but the start of a smile just the same. He hoped he didn’t look too guilty.  
He knew he’d never do it. There wasn’t any water they could afford to waste.


	11. Chapter 11

Pet.

He could see her imagining it, all the things that come with a dog. Keeping it as their own. A name, something sturdy to pretend that could make it strong. Maybe train it to fetch, or hunt rabbits, or sniff out walkers. A warm body to curl up to at night—something more than just a hand.  
He could see her thoughts falling in on themselves. She was embarrassed. Even had the nerve to blush, glancing up at him.

_Seems silly, right?_

He wanted to say no. That even in a world where dinner was a given, there would always be something more to want. Like fresh jelly, straight from the jar. Or a soft cushioned coffin. Or a shot of peach schnapps. A hand to cling to when you can’t sleep. A pet dog.  
He didn’t say anything. He still wasn’t sure what he wanted, but it was getting harder and harder not to stare. He didn’t think it was a good thing. Too long and she started burning like the sun, red hot needles pricking his eyes until he saw spots whenever he blinked. Fitting that she always wore yellow.

The dog didn’t come back, but he almost wished it would have. Would’ve been nice to have something else for her to coddle, raking her hands through its fur. Maybe he’d have been able to unravel his thoughts from that memory of her by the fire—they’d all gotten caught in her hair.  



	12. Chapter 12

More.

She’s pretty, but that’s not what it’s about. Pretty means less now than it ever did, not that it mattered much before.  
It’s not about wanting to kiss her or take her by the hips in the moonlight. That’s never been him. It’s all he can do to graze fingers.

It’s about the way she looks at him; different looks, different meanings, but all of them good. Warm. Steady.  
She’s something good. Something warm against his side at night and steady on his back. She’s something only a little far off, and he can’t help but feel like he’s getting closer and closer, warmer and warmer, holding his breath so he won’t snuff her out.

It’s about seeing her. It’s not the first time, but all those first moments were just glimpses. Her hair by the fire. Her arms around Judith. A sliver of shoulder. The scar on her wrist. And they’d never meant much till now, but now they mean everything. Because she was never just that sad girl in the bathroom, or her voice by the fire, or the prison babysitter. Never just a sister or daughter or mother or girlfriend, and he’s sorry he never saw that before, because he knows what it’s like to be ground down to a word so much less than you are.

It’s about the way she sees him. _Really_ sees him. He’s so much more than the bow in his hands, the scars on his back.   
And she’s so much more than a pretty face and he doesn’t need to tell her that, but he _wants_ to. He wants to tell her all the things he wished he’d heard when it would have mattered. He wants to tell her she matters.

He’s thinking about letting her know. He thinks he’s getting closer.  



	13. Chapter 13

Father.

He’d still carried the feel of her in his arms, long after setting her upright. The feel of her leg, a palm on her knee as he felt around her injured ankle. He could kick himself for getting sloppy; too busy staring at the curves of her arms, to notice the trap her feet were headed towards.

Her arm around his shoulders and his around her waist. She’s so skinny he’s worried she might snap in half. He can feel her bones, thin and brittle. He hates that he knows she’s hungry. He is too. Even on a good day there’s never enough food, even at the prison, even at the farm. He wonders if that’s what caused the whole mess; everyone just got too damn hungry, even the dead.

He likes the feel of her on his back and he knows he’ll be carrying it for a while, even after her foot heels. He likes having her so close to hold onto. The relief of wearing a parachute, just in case. Her arms lay loose around his neck, somehow more dangerous than the crossbow. She’s breathing little gasps with each heavy step he takes across the graveyard. He tries not to think about the feel of her mouth near his ear, warm and humid in the winter air. Things are getting complicated. That’s never been a good sign.

She stops him at the headstone and he reads the words and he knows she’s thinking about Hershel, because suddenly he is too. _Beloved father_. Words like that make him think of men like Hershel and Rick. Never his own father. No one ever had something like that to say about him.

Daryl stoops and rips up some wildflowers to drop on the grave. It’s a wonder they haven’t died yet from the cold. It doesn’t mean much, but Beth takes his hand just the same. And this time isn’t like the night before, because this time he’s not surprised anymore. And this time her skin feels like it’s made of sun-warmed pennies, hot to the touch. And this time he folds his fingers around hers. And he’s starting to know what he wants.


	14. Chapter 14

Stay.

He isn’t sure why he lays out the food like some sort of last supper. Her words still ring through his mind, less a taunt than a lullaby.

_There are still good people in the world, Daryl._

He’d disagreed, but he hadn’t really meant it, because he was starting to see what she saw. Starting to think a little differently.

Things were getting complicated. He could still feel her knees bent over his arm like a fishhook, even after he sat her down at the table. Her hands at the nape of his neck. Her shriek of a laugh, way too loud for the apocalypse but he couldn’t bring himself to say so. He liked knowing he could make her laugh. That there were still sounds like that at the end of the world.

Things were getting complicated. He’d had to sleep in the reprieving room, on the couch where orphans and widows used to grieve their lost loved ones. She’d offered to sing him to sleep again. Just like that, half-lit by candles, hair framing her face, eyes and mouth soft as she looked at him.

Neither of them spoke for a while. Neither of them looked away. She was needling his eyes again, but it was still a long moment before he blinked. _Nah_ , he sighed, and he collapsed on that sofa, trying to drown out the sound of her voice in the next room.

It was getting easier to imagine what it might be like to stay. Not just at the funeral home, but with her. Together. This was his pet dog fantasy, except he’d never much wanted a pet. Never seemed worth the effort. Looking at her there, across the table, he could see now that he was wrong.

He’d been wrong about a lot of things.

She’s smiling again. She’d always smiled before; at the farm, at the prison. At everyone, and at life in general. He, like the rest of them, had chalked it all up to her youth. Naivety. He was embarrassed for that now.

_What changed your mind?_

He shrugs in answer, thinking she won’t bother asking again. Or maybe that she’ll read him the way she’d had to when they’d first started out; when he was still hollow from the loss of their home and their family. When words had left his mouth filled with cobwebs, so that all he could do was grunt.

But it’s been weeks since then and they’re so far past that by now. And they’re warm and their stomachs are filled with peanut butter and jelly and the house still echoes with the sound of her music and she’s smiling at him and everything is so goddamned complicated and he isn’t sure of anything anymore.

 _Oh_.

And she knows, he knows she does; he can feel it in everything they can’t find the words to say. And he knows she wants something more from him but he’s not sure what that is, and then suddenly the alarm trips and he shoots down the hall like a rocket.

He’s grateful for the distraction. Maybe it’s the dog. Maybe he’ll bring it in and she’ll coddle it while he thinks of what to say next.  



	15. Chapter 15

Okay.

Zach’s the kind of kid that before-Daryl would have found easy to hate. Easy to terrorize. Maybe would have thrown empty bottles at him for fun. Before-Daryl was a jackass.

Now, Daryl kind of likes the kid. Kind of; as much as he can like anyone while still clutching to the thought they might die. He knows he doesn’t have to be so pessimistic—Hell, he isn’t so much anymore—but the idea’s always there as he looks around them. As Glenn tells him a joke, or Sasha nudges him with an elbow, or Rick puts a tired palm on his arm.

 _They might die soon_ , he tells himself. _Don’t get so attached._

He’d never been good at following orders, even his own.

Zach was easy to like; not so hardened by the end of the world. He laughed easily. A lot of things came easy to him. Laughter, friendship, love. Or what passes for it. Watching him kiss the Greene girl, soft and chaste as a Hallmark flick, Daryl isn’t sure he’d call what they have _special_. Certainly not when compared to Maggie and Glenn. But, he reckons what Maggie and Glenn had managed to dig up in the overturned cemetery their world had become, had been rare even before the apocalypse. Sometimes you just had to settle for silly kid kisses with the first person to ask.

 _Like a damn romance novel_ , Daryl growls as Beth saunters away.

 _Saunters_ —he’s never seen her so confident, not since that night on the road. And Zach’s smiling again because that’s who he is, and Daryl doesn’t actually mind all that much. He knows what it’s like to want a distraction, even if his were never so nice as a kiss.

Zach did everything easily, until the day that he died. That had been hard; his screams as the flesh was ripped from his skull. Daryl didn’t have the time to put him down, and that was hardest of all. Knowing that kid was out there, a half-eaten mess of gore, lying in wait for the next sorry kid to trip up while running. He’d died because he hadn’t left early, hadn’t shied away from saving a man he hardly knew, leg trapped and splintering. The knowledge of that speared Daryl through his ribs, like that arrow all over again. Zach had died playing hero, and Daryl had left him behind.

Carol offered to tell Beth, but he wanted to do it. He’d done it before, head down, voice soft, words reassuring. Things like, _Don’t worry we put her down quick_ , or _They went out trying to save us._ It never got easier. They always wanted something more, something he couldn’t give them. Not a hug, not a funeral. Those words were the only comfort they had left.

He wasn’t sure why he needed to be the one to tell her. He was sure she’d cry, sure she’d want him to hold her, sure he wouldn’t be able to do even that. He should have sent Carol, but the sound of Zach’s scream still rang in his ears. His eyes as they’d left him. He stowed the memory away and leaned into her cell.

She was writing in a journal. He wasn’t sure where she’d got it, but he’d seen her writing once or twice. It was a calming sight, her skinny hand across the page, legs bent up behind her. She looked younger than ever inside the room. She’d dolled it up some, with odds and ends collected over the months. He wasn’t sure how she found the time, between mothering Judith and behind mothered by the rest of the group. She was daughter and mother in one skinny body, young and old all at once and he wasn’t sure how she’d managed to tuck all of it into her tiny pale frame.

She noticed him eventually. He hadn’t wanted to startle her, but he didn’t want to stop her hand. She sat up gradually, like he was a stray dog she didn’t want to scare off. He hated that he made her feel that way; cautious. She was one of the few that still remembered him as the man that burned and boiled at the edge of her farm. Wore a band of Walker ears around his neck like some crude Indian scalp belt. He wondered if she ever looked at him and remembered his gun, still smoking from the bullet lodged in her mother’s dead brain.

She knew before he told her, but he wasn’t surprised. He hardly ever struck up conversations that weren’t just bad news. She didn’t cry, didn’t ask what his last words were, didn’t ask if he was still out there, a moaning bundle of bones.

 _I’m glad I didn’t say goodbye_ , she offered, even though he didn’t ask. It was better not to ask. _I hate goodbyes_.

And she looked at him and he knew she could tell that he understood. Goodbyes were the signature on a death certificate. He’d learned just to keep his mouth shut, his trigger hand ready.

And then she asked if he was okay, just like Carol some minutes before, but somehow different. And he let the words out before he could catch them, because he hardly ever lasted this long in conversation, one-sided as it was.

 _Just tired of losing people_. And he was, but it was so much more than that. He was tired of finding people, collecting them up off the side of the road like stray cats that needed rescuing, only to have them ripped apart in the end. He was tired of being nervous around them, nervous to get close, to like them, because he knew they’d most likely end up eaten or shot, and he was tired of mourning people before he even got to know them.

He didn’t tell her all of it, because he didn’t need to, and because she slipped her skinny arms around him like she’d done it a million times. Like he wasn’t some half-stranger who’d shot her mother on her own farm. Her arms were stronger than he would have thought, and she was warmer, and he tried not to stare as her sweater fell a ways down her arm. He couldn’t bring himself to hug her back—he was altogether too uncomfortable and the whole thing was too strange—so he just gripped her elbow to let her know he was fine, even though he wasn’t.

She pulled away and he could tell she didn’t believe him, but she also didn’t press. Just stared at him like she was remembering something, other than the way he’d looked as her mother hit the ground.


	16. Chapter 16

Trade.

He’s remembering a moment. After the still. Before the sprain.

They’d just started her training, and he was adjusting her shoulders as she held up the bow. The feel of it was familiar in a specific sort of way that he didn’t really understand. He’s not sure how he’s gotten so comfortable with her. He watches a few strands of gold hair fall on his hand. He doesn’t brush them away.

He tells her to bend her knees some and aim the bolt a little higher. She hums in response, the sound happier than he’s used to. The sky is changing from blue and gray and white, to just gray, and he knows that should fall heavy on his shoulders. But he’s never felt so light, as she pulls back the trigger.

And he knows she misses their family, and damned if he doesn’t too, but it’s hard not to think about what it might be like, just the two of them. Just the feel of her hair on his knuckles, her shoulder blade beneath his palm. And he’s never felt so guilty, and he’s starting to think it might not be so bad….

The memory’s gone just as suddenly as it came to him, and he’s standing there, staring out at the trees that brought the whole scene on. The thought of that day has left him winded, and he turns back to head into the church where the others are waiting.

And Rick called him his brother just some days ago. It meant more than Daryl could say, though he knew he didn’t have to explain that.

But it did nothing to fill up the hollowed space in his sternum, etched deep in his bone like a grave. He’d never felt so morbid. He knew who’d dug it out with the shovel, her little thin hands wrapped around wood.

He almost didn’t say her name. Wasn’t sure when he got so damned superstitious. He told Maggie she was alive, even though she might not be. He prayed he didn’t jinx it as the words fell from his mouth.

And he’d never felt so disheartened as when he’d found everyone alive except her. It was the universe making things equal, squaring them up, because she was worth more than every other head in that church. And he hates himself for thinking it, because they’re all his blood, same as her.

But he can’t help wondering if it was worth it, trading words like _brother_ for whatever it was she’d been.  



	17. Chapter 17

Change.

_I wish I could just change._

_You have._

And he means it, but he’s not sure if it’s a compliment or just a statement of fact. The hardened girl before him is a far cry from that quiet thing, slicing at her wrists with a shard of jagged mirror. He thinks back to that, sometimes, and can’t help the juvenile worry from creeping up his spine. Seven years. That’s a lot of bad luck no one can afford, these days. Sometimes he thinks it might follow them, like a bad smell. Like the Walkers. All the people they’ve lost, between this moment and then, all the homes; he wonders if they can all be chalked up to a few dozen bits of glass and one impulsive decision.

He never blamed her, though that needn’t be said. Never judged her for it, either. No one judged her as harshly as she did herself, always quick to frown down at the scar with a swipe of her thumb, and then shield it with bracelets so no one would see. She’s embarrassed about it, even though he knows she doesn’t need to be. Some people aren’t built for the apocalypse. Sometimes it whittles a person down into sawdust. Hell, Andrea would have blown herself up if Dale hadn’t stopped her.

But sometimes the tragedy carves a person until they’re strong enough to take it, or sharp enough to bite back. He’d watched Beth Greene get whittled away, slowly becoming the girl staring up at him now, half-empty mason jar gripped in her hands. Same pale, skinny limbs and yellow hair. Sturdier shoulders. Harder eyes.

And he found himself hating what the world had done to her, because while she might not have made it this long without changing, he knew she shouldn’t have had to.


	18. Chapter 18

Three.

Three days. Three days spent sleeping in a home meant for corpses. Until a cross in the windshield and she was snatched away. Daryl didn’t need a fucking bible to see the symbolism of it all. Sometimes God has a shitty sense of humor.

He ran until he couldn’t, until the bones of his knees were ground into mash and he collapsed where the three roads met, feeling more than anything like that dumb kid in high school, given all the pieces of a puzzle but all he saw were lines on a page. His mind went over the number three like it was some kind of sign, and maybe it was, but signs didn’t much matter anymore.

Three homes; the farm, the prison, the funeral house. Three fathers; the Governor and Rick and Hershel. Three little girls he couldn’t save; Sophia and Judith and Beth. He knew she wasn’t little. Knew she was strong enough to save herself, ankle be damned.

Or thought he knew. It was hard not to picture her limping through the pain, trying to fight off the Walkers and other wolves, one legged just like her dad.

But he was the one that saved. The only thing he was good at, the only thing he could offer. To Rick, to Hershel, to Beth. And now here he was, collapsed at a crossroads, thinking on a number that didn’t matter much.

Joe found him later, and he tried not to think about her so much around them. She felt like something trapped under his fingernails. A bit of flesh caught back in his teeth. And he didn’t need to make the obvious comparison. He’d never understood the Walkers so clearly. But that didn’t stop him from shooting them through the head. They were dogs needing to be put down and the more time he spent with this feral pack, the more he felt his own euthanasia couldn’t be too far off.

He saw her in the woods. The others were milling about, always somewhere too close for comfort, hanging around like lung cancer in the air. He knew she wasn’t real. It was Merle and the arrow, all over again. Sophia. He couldn’t help the panic at the memory of what had happened after that little mirage.

Staring at her now, hair messy but eyes bright and those dimples, a pair of graves in her cheeks, he let himself reach out for her, the way he never could before. Seems silly now. A goddamned waste of time.

She smelled like the trees, and he wished he could bury himself in her. In that hair and those eyes and those dimples. Just crawl into the earth of her skin and then crawl out when he wasn’t so tired, anymore.

That comparison wasn’t lost on him, either. He wondered if this was him losing his mind. He thought of Rick after Lori, and wondered if soon _he’d_ pick up a phone to the voice of a dead girl. He hoped it wouldn’t be Beth.

She laughed, eyes soft and shining. He felt warm again, even if he knew it was fake. That didn’t help the aching.

 _Told you you’d miss me,_ she smiled. And he wanted to say she’d been right, she’d been right about so many things, and if she only told him how to find her, he’d make sure that she knew.

But then she was gone; no fading off or walking away. No smoke in the air. Just gone, just like that night. And he could still feel her under his fingernails, in his teeth, hanging between his shoulder blades with all the other scars.


	19. Chapter 19

Safe.

He had never felt so relieved. Not even that day after losing the farm, and then finding everyone alive on the highway. Not after securing the prison. Not after finding Carol in that cell block, and then finding her again after Terminus. Not after making it through Joe’s attack, or reuniting with the others in that goddamned boxcar. Not even as they left Terminus smoldering at their backs.

This was an entirely new relief; weeks’ worth of breaths he hadn’t known he’d been holding, trapped in his lungs with thoughts of her, pushing him along.

She looked harder than when she’d left him. Another chunk whittled away. But the rest of her was there, and that was enough. It was so much more than enough. He’d been thinking on what to say, on where they’d left off. In the end, he settled for a palm on her shoulder—mostly to make sure she was real. Words hadn’t always worked between them. Just the feel of her was enough.

They could finish that conversation later. Right now he just wanted her safe.  



	20. Chapter 20

Eulogy. 

In the days that followed, he spent each moment twisting that day in his mind, rewriting the ending. He’d always had a good imagination.

Sometimes she aimed a little higher, metal spearing through the fleshy part of Dawn’s neck. Sometimes she went for the head. Sometimes Dawn misfired, or miscalculated, or missed. Sometimes he kept his hand on Beth’s shoulder, even as she ached to step away. Sometimes Dawn didn’t even ask for Noah, just watched them leave across the quiet linoleum.

The dreams themselves didn’t really matter, so much as the ending. Always the same. His hand on her shoulder, her leading away. Her eyes, tough as thistles, but he can still see that light shining through, and he knows he can reach it. They get back to that conversation. They breathe air that isn’t the stench of cleaner chemicals, or sunburned rotting flesh. They breathe out. She smiles.

The dreams don’t matter, so much as the way they leave him; on his back on the ground, insides all twisted and he isn’t sure he can bear it, and he thinks about carving himself open to let the rottenness out. He comes close a couple times, but doesn’t go through with it. He doesn’t want the others to find him like that, all bloody and gruesome and clawing at air. Mostly he just wants to lay there and cling to her; each stupid memory he never gave much thought. They’re all he can think about now, and she isn’t even here to see it, she can’t even gloat. He feels like he’s being swallowed, burned away by the acids in her stomach. She didn’t even have to turn, to consume him.

They’d tried to help him dig the grave, but he’d driven them off with his silence. Silence and the sound of him clawing through earth. Better than screaming, he supposed. Better than tossing words like daggers, saying things he knows he’d regret.

 _We all loved her_ , Rick had tried on sympathy, but it hadn’t quite fit. _She was one of ours_.

And he was right, but the words just hung crooked in the air, because Daryl couldn’t answer.

 _Not like I did_ , he wanted to say. _It was different with us_. And it was, but he kept his mouth shut on the bonfire raging inside him, leaving him charred from the inside out.

It _was_ different, but he’s still not sure how, and now he won’t ever know the answer.

He didn’t stay for the service.

Father Gabriel delivered a eulogy, but he didn’t want to hear about her from some stranger. All their best moments hadn’t used many words.


	21. Chapter 21

Baggage.

He carried her across his back, in more ways than one. Even in her absence, he felt her, strung around his shoulders, heavier than the crossbow that banged against his spine. He felt her arms loose around his neck like a rope, too warm to be a weapon, but dangerous all the same. She was altogether too warm for him, and he felt her like a sunburn. It only hurt when he prodded, as if to make sure it was still there. He knew that eventually it would scab over and then become another scar to add to his collection. Another way for her to end up on his back.

The first time, she’d wrapped her arms around his waist. It was strange and foreign, and he wasn’t sure he deserved whatever it was she was trying to give. Comfort, he knew, but it only made him more uncomfortable. He was drunk, which made it worse. Made him stumble. She clenched tighter, arms too skinny to cause any real damage, but tight enough to be a nuisance. Tight enough to hold him just a little less crooked. Tight enough for him to forget how to breathe. He was crying too, but he tried not to think about that part. She never mentioned it after, which caught him off guard. The girl had done nothing but chatter about anything at all, the whole time he’d been stuck with her. But suddenly she was all half-whispers and soft eyes in the dark, breath smelling like moonshine and knees just a few inches from his. Just enough for him to notice.   
And then she wanted to burn the whole damn thing down and, fool as he was, still a little drunk off the liquor, and her thin little arms against his ribs, he helped her do it. They watched the flames for a while. Or he watched her, while she watched the flames. And then it was time to go, and he gripped her arm because his hands had always worked better than his mouth, and because he wanted to feel if she really had been that warm, or if it’d all been the booze.

The second time was an invitation. They’d been going on for weeks, now. Sometimes she still chattered, but mostly it was fingers on an elbow, a glance over the shoulder, soft eyes in the dark. She’d been smiling more and he wasn’t fool enough to think he was the reason, but he figured he might as well enjoy it while it lasted. He kept having to remind himself that it might not last. No point in getting sloppy, like at the farm and then the prison. No point trying to play house; he’d learned his lesson. Or thought he had. She was making it easier than ever to forget the scars on his back. All the other bodies he carried.  
His fascination with her arms had grown some, extended to her shoulders as she aimed his bow with care. He’d been surprised she could lift it. Surprised and what, proud? Relieved he had something to give her, even if it was as fucked up as lessons in how to kill. She didn’t seem to mind. There were a lot of things she didn’t seem to mind, in a world where happiness was all but an abstract concept. A goddamned philosophy, too complex for him to grasp because every time he thought he had, he felt like he was in high school all over again, having the test ripped away before he could even write down his name. One of the many reasons he’d dropped out. And though he’d never been a fan of the _What If_ games, not keen on admitting that most of his best memories had come after the whole goddamned apocalypse, she had him wondering what might have been different if he’d stuck around to graduate.  
He was fascinated by her hands, which only made things harder. It was a hard thing, to bend down before her, back bared, voice choppy. His mouth never worked right. She thought it was a joke at first and he couldn’t blame her. He’d never really been the type to offer a ride, like some kind of trick pony, but then she hitched her little body—all muddy skin and toothpick bones—up on his back and it was like that day outside the still all over again, except her arms weren’t as tight and his hands were on her thighs as her knees dug into his ribcage. He’d never really noticed her hands until she slipped one between his fingers, quicker than he could think but slow enough that he could feel it. And then he kept catching himself staring down at the pair of tiny creations dangling off her tiny pale wrists. Wrapped around a jar of peanut butter. Wrapped around him. Pricking the keys of an old piano like little white pins. Like candles on his skin, leaving pools of wax so he would know she’d been there.

The third time was the last time. He’d been shouldering her weight for a while now, though the scab was all but picked clean. He kept her in the corner of his eye, just the way he remembered her. A pair of big eyes and dimples. Mop of yellow hair that shone even through shadow. Grimy yellow shirt covered in blood and other things they didn’t talk about. Lips puckered up in an _oh_. He liked to think they might get a chance to finish that conversation, though he still wasn’t sure what to say. He thought on it sometimes, but mostly he just thought of her. Finding her, hoping that she at least carried what he’d taught her. Hoping she carried something else of him too.   
He did find her, less than how he’d expected, but he found her all the same. She wore the same clothes but new scars and hard eyes. He felt the loss of her dimples like a punch in the gut, but her shoulder beneath his palm was still warm, which relieved him. He’d seen others come back from worse. _He’d_ come back from worse.  
But then she was stepping forward and she had the scissors in her hand and she had a bullet in her skull and her blood went everywhere but his eyes snagged on the red in her hair as she crumpled, just a bag of thin bones. He pulled the trigger, quicker than he could think but slow enough to feel it. He could feel everything, but mostly he felt the weight of her on his shoulders, even as he carried her corpse in his arms.


End file.
